As I said last week around this time, tonight we count on the magic number to help us wake up and get a room at the Atlanta Marriott “Science Mothafrackin’ Fiction” Marquis tomorrow morning.

In fact, it’s official. Dragoncon.org says so, and I quote:

The Atlanta Marriott Marquis will start taking reservations for the 2012 show on Monday, Oct. 3rd at 8:00am et.

That’s 7am for me. Which isn’t too early, honestly. I can even go to the JFZ tomorrow morning at my regular time and come home and still have plenty of time to call in all my L.A. privileges.

Not only that, but the hotel is going to be cheaper than my friend and I had thought! $190/night for a single/double!!! Sweet!

Also, for those of you who may be interested in staying at the Hilton, I found out today that RESERVATIONS ARE ALREADY OPEN!!! You must call a special number and mention Dragon*Con 2012. That number is 1-800-445-8667. I found this out after looking at the D*C website and it wasn’t exactly clear whether the reservations were open or not, so I called the Hilton and a nice guy answered and gave me this secret number. So now I feel useful, like one of the Hardy Boys or something.

The other hotels (Hyatt Regency, the Sheraton, and the Westin Peachtree Plaza), I can’t speak of, because I don’t know when the reservations will be open, or if they are already.

Right now the plan is to call the Marriott Marquis in the morning and, if that fails, call the Hilton. I honestly feel pretty confident that we’ll get in at one of these.

the Uninvited Guest

Last night, while chillin’ around a campfire in the backyard, peacefully enjoying the cooler temperatures with some wine and a pipeful of pipeweed (Rattray’s “Hal ‘o’ the Wynd” smoked from a Peterson 309 Rustic P-Lip, for any of my fellow members of the Pipesmokers Guild out there), an uninvited guest showed up.

Because of the connotations associated with a phrase like “the uninvited guest”, you have probably already guessed that this guest wasn’t human.

And you would be right…

Malachy Seamus O’Possum

That, friends, is a possum.

The tree he is in is a palm tree. That is the tropics… Alabama style! I should be shot for typing that just now. Or this: Alabahama. Kill me.

These particular palm trees are “jelly palms”, meaning they produce jelly palm fruit, a rather loquat-ish fruit that is edible, but isn’t the greatest shit in the world… unless you are a possum or a raccoon.

Every year, when the jelly fruits come out, they sit on the tree because we don’t eat them (the fruits, not the possums), and then fall off and rot on the ground. The scent of the fruit attracts a lot of critters. Possums & raccoons being the only “real” animals. The rest are flies and yellerjackets, mostly.

The possums and raccoons eat the fermented fruit and get drunk as WC Fields (“A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her!”).

This is humorous to me.

I’ve always found animals to be really funny anyway, but when they’re drunk, they really ramp up their silly antics.

Malachy here, despite his Paddy heritage, was not here to feast on intoxicating mystery fruit. I like to think he just stopped in for a visit.

Entranced by our rituals of drinking the concentrated element of the fruit he was after, and by the rousing smell of a roasting pure Virginia pipeweed wafting on the fall air, he dared think he would be welcome around our hearth.

What he did not realize however, is that humans may think he is cute in the face, but when they see that disgusting tail, all bets are off. I don’t know what the colloquial slang for the opposite of a butterface is, but possums are that. Buttertails. As in, “Everything is cute, buttertail.”

That thing really taps into some bygone human memory and elicits a natural response not unlike when you discover you have accidentally stuck your hand in a booger when you tried to move your table.

And if you look at this next picture, Malachy really just looks like a giant rat caught in a tree.

Check out that leathery tail. Gross.

Little did Malachy Seamus O’Possum know, but it was less than an inch of glass that separated him from certain death at the hands of our most feral roommate.

the glowing eyes of death are watching you, Mr. O’Possum

Mr. Fletch. If you could somehow will that glass away, Mr. O’Possum would meet a fate reserved only for Christians in the Roman Colosseum. To be torn limb-from-limb by a wild rampaging cat.

And Mr. O’Possum thought the main threat was the humans with cameras and liquid refreshment…. ha!

Food, Lately

I know I haven’t been documenting everything I eat. I probably should, so that I don’t eat any pizzas, for fear of having to report on it here. Not that you give a shit.

Boring, I know. Almost as boring as reading about a possum in a palm tree.

Anyway, here’s a meal I’ve had twice in the past week:

from Cracker Barrel (laugh if you want, I love it):

– 2 grilled Rainbow Trout filets (delicious)

– 1 side of green beans

– 2 sides of turnip greens (one of my favorites)

For breakfast every day, I eat yogurt mixed with that Kashi Twig cereal. I also drink V8, water, and copious amounts of black coffee.

Lunch, lately, has been a baked potato topped with either eggs or beans. Then brown sauce.

Dinner has been crawfish, or celery with soy butter, or something else. My main meal of the day is lunch, especially when I’m trying to lose weight. Last night I had an apple and a can of sardines (gettin’ my Omega-3’s bitch!).

Between meals, I rely on my fruit’n’nut sets and rice cakes. Sometimes some celery and soy butter (soy butter was on sale. 99 cents a jar! Can ya believe that?).

I doubt any of this is good for me at all. Especially the eating-out meals and the taters with beans. But it’s definitely better than buffalo wings (which are coming sometime soon with the coupon I mentioned before), pizza, and heavy beer.

Before we go, here’s another pic of Fletch, just because I thought it was awesome.